Bill Clinton: “I support school choice. I support school choice. I have advocated expansions of public school choice alternatives and…”

“I support school choice. I support school choice. I have advocated expansions of public school choice alternatives and, I said, the creation of 3,000 new schools that we are going to help the States to finance. But if you're going to have a private voucher plan, that ought to be determined by States and localities where they're raising and spending most of the money. I simply think it's wrong to take money away from programs that are helping build basic skills for kids--90 percent of them are in the public schools--to take money away from programs that are helping fund the school lunch program, that are helping to fund the other programs, that are helping our schools to improve their standards. Our schools are getting better. And our schools can be made to be even better still with the right kind of community leadership and partnership at the school level. I have been a strong force for reform. And Senator, I remind you that a few years ago, when I supported a teacher testing law in my home State, I was pretty well lambasted by the teachers association. I just don't believe we ought to be out there running down teachers and attacking them the way you did at the Republican Convention. I think we ought to be lifting them up and moving our children forward. And let me just say, that budget you passed that I vetoed would have cut 50,000 kids out of Head Start. It would have eliminated the AmeriCorps plan. And it would have cut back on student loans and scholarships. Now, it would have; that's a fact. That's one of the big reasons I vetoed it. We need to be doing more in education, not less. Senator Dole. Well, the AmeriCorps program, I must say, if that's one of your successes I wouldn't speak about it too loudly. It's cost about $27,000 to pay people to volunteer. We've got 4 million young people volunteering every year. The number hasn't gone down. And you pick out 20,000, whether they need the money or not, and they get paid for volunteering. I like young people. I like teachers. I'm a product of public schools. You attended a private school for some time in your life. I like teachers. You're not for school choice. You can't be for school choice, because it's that special interest money again. When you're getting 99.5 percent of the money--we don't know what happened to the other .5 percent; we're looking for it. Somebody got it. But it all went to Democrats, and this is part of that liberal establishment, one of those liberal things that you just can't do. You're for school uniforms and curfews, and you're opposed to truancy. Now, that's not reform, Mr. President. Why can't Landel Shakespeare in Cleveland or Pilar Gonzalez in Milwaukee give their children an opportunity to go to a better school? Some schools aren't safe; some schools aren't even safe. Your choice is nothing. Let's give them a real choice, the kind of choice you have and the kind of choice a lot of people have in America. If we want to stop crime and teenage pregnancy, let's start with education.”